Adjusting the speaker view size during screen sharing

[Beatitude]

Hi everyone,

As a moderator (or host) in several meetings, I assist presenters during their meetings. Most of them use their personal computers and use Zoom only because they have to. Personal documents can be visible and alerts can pop up anytime. For this reason, I always advise sharing only one window at a time, not the complete screen's content, which means they can't quickly switch to another app if needed. In PowerPoint, that means they can't easily switch from one presentation to another.

I occasionally receive requests from speakers (co-hosts) to adjust how they appear on screen to viewers. However, I haven’t been able to find a definitive solution to this issue. Speakers are often deeply focused on their presentation, and many don’t have the time, knowledge, or patience to navigate Zoom’s many and ever-changing settings.

Most speakers use dual-screen setups, with their secondary screen having much higher resolution than their webcam. This results in their video feed appearing very small compared to the presentation, and some of them prefer a setup where their video is dynamically resized to be more prominent, similar to how it might appear on a TV screen. This problem is even more noticeable in the recording, where the speaker's video is so small it’s nearly impossible to see, even in full screen.

Is there a way for the host to quickly adjust the size of a speaker’s video feed for other participants?

Another common request is to have the participants appear on the secondary screen (the higher-resolution one) and the presentation on the main screen (the lower-resolution one), to avoid the awkward “side-gaze” effect. I can't possibly know where they put their secondary screen. Some of them have it on the right, some reversed them in their OS (logical left is physical right…), some have it above the laptop. I just can't know.

Is there a quick way to switch Zoom windows between monitors? A single-click solution would greatly help presenters in maintaining eye contact no matter if presenting or answering a question.

Lastly, when using PowerPoint's presentation mode, speakers often lose sight of the participants entirely, which many find uncomfortable because they miss out on visual feedback from the audience. Additionally, many dislike how Zoom controls overlap the presentation slides.

It seems that since the pandemic, Zoom has added many new options that may be helpful to some users, but they've also made the interface needlessly complicated for others, often neglecting basic ergonomic considerations. Among other irritating issues in my use cases:

• full-screen by default. The presenter has to go through an additional step just to start his/her presentation.
• No sound on screen sharing by default. I take great care in embedding videos in whatever presentation they're making so as to avoid disrupting the presentation flow by switching to another app.

Thanks for any insights!

[storyhub]

Once a participant SHARES THEIR screen the appearance is primarily controlled by the participant. The appearance can be changed by using layouts (seen in the upper right area of the share window) or use of templates by selecting view (upper right of Zoom window) > immersive. When  the participant is not sharing the host can use spotlighting to make a speaker prevalent over other speakers by selecting the menu (...) of that participants video then "spotlight for everyone". When a participant sets their Zoom to view > fullscreen they will see a separate window with participants shown. This window has several choices for appearance control. The one I use the most is the grid mode (I have 4 screens). In this mode the window can be resized and re-positioned (to another screen if desired). This window does not change on other participants screen because of screen sharing by a participant. This window can also show the speaker other participants when sharing power point.

The host can not control where participants place Zoom windows. This is a function of the OS and the participant. For the most part it is a drag-and-drop operation like any other window would be.

Fullscreen by default is controlled in settings > general.

By default screen share is for graphics displays and maintains the participants screen resolution. Participant still needs to select optimize for video and/or share sound either before or after screen share is started. After screen share sound can be shared and video optimized by selecting more... then the appropriate selection near the bottom of the pop-up dialog. Stereo or mono audio can also be selected.

If as a host you want full control of a participant's computer you could use Real VNC for desktop access, which allows full control of the participants configuration.

[Beatitude]

Good to know, but is there a list of instructions I could send presenters a day or two before actually starting their session?

I just can't go "click here, select that…where's your other monitor?…No, there's no way I can see your Zoom controls unless we use AnyDesk, do you want to…OK we haven't got time, let's start again with your PowerPoint…Oh, there isn't any time left, we have to get going." being cut by their often incessant babbling yet not waiting to get full instructions before sharing content.

Remotely controlling their computer would in fact help in a lot of cases, but for most of them, it's strictly forbidden by security policies. Plus it would go against all often-repeated security basics: don't click on anything you don't know, never say yes to anything/anyone, don't let private documents in full view. Not counting the fact that this would be way beyond what I'm supposed to do. Even with the skills, should something not work properly after that, I'd be one to blame (and fire).

For those presenters working in hospitals, they use a very complicated and failure-prone authentication method:

Home computer logs remotely into hospital workstation through WebEX because they couldn't bring their documents (policy forbids it). But first, the hospital workstation must in turn authenticate to the hospital's server. If authentication successful, server gives permission to workstation. The workstation gets the OK to log in user, but turning on secondary monitors on that workstation also requires server permission (sic), which sometimes times out when everybody is doing it at the same time. By then the first WebEX connection attempt would have timed out, too. They have to find it again among their desktop documents and when they finally do, the workstation has logged them off automatically because of inactivity.

On a good day, one of them said, start the workstation about 20 minutes beforehand, time to go through all those hoops.

Even keeping to the strictly technical, adding all those layers of remote viewing and authentication will bring any workstation to its knees.

That's why I always urge them to "simplify" things. Close all unnecessary windows, three open browsers, Outlook, gosh, even un-plug the second monitor if they can't find their way around. One of them had Chrome as default browser but on every start up, Chrome showed competitor's icons on the home page (must have been a EU-bought computer). He just clicked the "Edge" icon from inside the browser trying to launch it instead of using the Start menu… which did nothing to set "Edge" as default browser.

Hence my question for a list of instruction they could follow first without having to try during the actual presentation.